


solus

by SomeRainMustFall



Category: Wuthering Heights (TV 2009), Wuthering Heights - All Media Types, Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
Genre: Abuse, Canonical Character Death, Child Abuse, Chronic Illness, Chronic Pain, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Manipulation, Not Happy, Physical Abuse, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Threats of Violence, Victim Blaming, until the very end and that comfort is DEATH
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:49:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27623627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomeRainMustFall/pseuds/SomeRainMustFall
Summary: “You will obey me.”“Yes, Father.”“Then we will get along just fine.” And with that, he thrusts Linton back down, stands, and leaves.It’s only after he’s safely alone in the room he now must call his own that Linton allows himself to sob, until he’s coughing into his pillow and exhaustion pulls him into slumber.He hopes his uncle will come tomorrow and save him from this.But his uncle does not come again.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 7





	solus

**Author's Note:**

> I took a mix of details from the book (of which I only read the horrors of Linton's chapters), the classic literature wiki character pages (which is from the book, just summarized), and the 2009 tv miniseries with Tom Payne. The timeline is the movie's six months instead of the book's ~3 years, and Linton is the movie's 18 and not the book's 12-16.
> 
> The treatment of Linton not only from everyone in the book (which in the end doesn't even matter to me because it is fiction) _but everyone in real life, real people,_ on literature sites, spark notes, literally everywhere, victim-blaming him............describing his character as a horrible, weak, whiny, unsympathetic bastard who, by the narrator's own words in the book, "deserves to die" who the world will be better without and "happily, he won't live to spring" and saying awful biased things like "no reader will feel sympathy for him when he dies".....as if he's the monster his father is instead of a horrifically abused _child_ who was born sick and manipulated and abused and brainwashed from 12 to 16 when he was literally _tortured to fucking death by his own fucking father, who felt no remorse or care afterwards_ , all while calling Heathcliff an anti-hero protagonist and "well YES, he did all that, but he still has feelings and the readers will be able to sympathize with him" disgusts me. Just absolutely fucking disgusts me.
> 
> :) 
> 
> That's it.

His uncle does not follow, as many times as he shouts for him.

Linton weeps as he’s deposited carelessly upon a couch inside, and he clutches at his coat, his blanket, pulls them tighter around himself and stifles his cries into a handful of fabric.

He’s afraid. He still doesn’t understand why he had to come here, to a man he didn’t know existed until a day ago, instead of staying with the man his mother had spoken of lovingly for years, until Linton felt he knew the man by heart though he’d never met him before.

His mother. He misses his mother so much. It isn’t fair for her to have been taken from him! And if she is gone, then he wishes to be as well, not _here,_ not with—

“There will be no more of that!” 

Linton gasps in a breath and holds it. His father approaches him with no hesitation and a horrible, sinister darkness in his eyes, looming over him until Linton lets out another helpless sob and then covers his mouth. 

“ _That,_ ” his father says. “Your _sniveling_. There will be not a _sound_ more of it. Do you understand?”

Linton says nothing, far too terrified. The two men who’d hauled him in here, neither of which he got the names of, look on with no intent to intervene. 

His silence provokes the man further, who barks out, “ _Do you?_ ”

“I want my uncle,” he whispers, because he can think of nothing else. 

His father raises his hand, and strikes him hard across the cheek. The force of it nearly sends Linton off to the floor. 

“I did ask a question,” his father says, "And I do expect an answer.”

He must make another noise he isn’t aware of, because his father is suddenly grabbing his face between both hands and shaking him. It makes him dizzy, makes him start to cough, but his father does not release him until he cries out, “Yes! Yes, Father, _please!”_

It placates the man, at least for the moment. He allows Linton to curl into himself against the arm of the couch, choking as he tries to breathe, and watches him with unconcealed disgust. 

“Apologize,” his father demands, and, between gasps, Linton obeys.

“I am—sorry, Father! I will—I will not cry!” 

His father smiles, though it doesn’t look at all genuine, a face somehow more frightening than the last. “Good lad. You see? If you’re only good to me, I can be good to you.”

Finally able to catch his breath, Linton nods and nods again. He flinches once when his father kneels down before him, and a second time when the man reaches out to grasp his chin, turning it this way and that, looking more disdained by the moment.

“You look just like her,” he says. “You and her. Dove eyes.”

“Mamma,” Linton says, soft as he can, and even the title on his tongue makes tears burn in his eyes and his face flush hot.

He’s not sure what it is that makes his father strike him again. He barely sees the man’s hand move. There’s just another painful sting across his skin, and it nearly takes more strength than he has to keep back any sound.

“You don’t mention her,” his father says, quite calmly. “Not her, or that bastard of a man Edgar. You will get what you deserve if you do, and I assure you I’ll have no grievances. Not a one. Understood?”

“Yes, Father,” Linton replies.

“You will obey me.”

“Yes, Father.”

“Then we will get along just fine.” And with that, he thrusts Linton back down, stands, and leaves. 

It’s only after he’s safely alone in the room he now must call his own that Linton allows himself to sob, until he’s coughing into his pillow and exhaustion pulls him into slumber.

He hopes his uncle will come tomorrow and save him from this. 

But his uncle does not come again.

**x**

For a while, things are, at the very least, rather bearable.

Linton does not cry in his father’s presence, and his father avoids him when he can. Mostly, Linton spends his days in his room or about the house, reading or sleeping. On his sicker days he does not leave his bed, but on better ones he can find the energy to roam, to even go outside sometimes.

He doesn’t get along with anyone here. Not his father, not his cousin, not the servants. Not even the tutor who comes a few times a week, who does nothing but bother him after a while because he has no personality of a friend Linton wants.

He’s lonely, and starved of attention, a feeling foreign to him until now. His mother never spent a moment away from him if she could help it, and he misses her now more than ever.

He doesn’t want to be here anymore. He wants to go where she is, to Heaven. He can’t bear to live out his life here, struck if he dares get in the way (even if he is not truly in the way at all), insulted at random, and ignored elsewise.

Desperate, he writes his uncle a letter. It barely speaks to the cruelty of his father, only mentions an offhand detail or two.

He tries to have it sent, and then, that night, as he’s slipping into sleep, the door to his room opens with such force he shoots upright with a cry.

“What is this?” 

His father stands in the doorway, holding his letter so tight it’s wrinkled. He can’t imagine the ink inside hasn’t smeared about and made it illegible, and he feels a burning in his eyes that he tries to ignore at the idea that his uncle will never receive it at all. Perhaps he can write another…

“Answer, boy!” his father shouts, and Linton squeezes his eyes shut. 

“A—a letter, Father.”

His father laughs. “He frightens me,” he says, and Linton realizes with sinking dread in his belly that the man is quoting his own words. “I don’t like it here. I don’t want to be here. I want my mother. I miss her dearly. You must save me."

Linton is trembling now, only able to stare up at his father as the man takes one step closer, and then another.

“I _frighten_ you,” his father says, and laughs again. “I frighten you! What is he going to save you from, boy? What have I done to you? I feed you. I clothe you. You have a room here, a bath, a personal tutor, and whatever you need. What, pray tell, has you this way?”

“You,” Linton answers, before he can decide whether he should or not. 

His father’s face twists into a terrifying sneer. “ _Wretch,_ ” he growls, and lunges forward, up onto the bed, slamming Linton down against the sheets. Linton shrieks, and his father hits him harder than he has before, at just the right angle that his vision flashes white. The shock of it renders him silent, his mouth hung open, and his father bashes his fist up against the underside of his jaw to shut it. 

“I told you to never speak of that slut in this house,” his father hisses down, spittle raining against his face, the stench of wine on his breath overpowering. “I told you, boy! I warned you. Did you think I would let you do so, and speak ill of me, just because you did so on paper?” 

“I—” Linton starts, but he never gets to finish, because suddenly his father’s hand is wrapped round his throat. 

It doesn’t push hard. It never entirely cuts off his air, though it undoubtedly makes it more difficult.

But the absolute terror that overcomes him, that freezes blood and muscle alike, is enough to steal his breath and his thoughts and any hope he might have once had at trying to resist. There is _nothing_ within him anymore but fear, but the most awful certainty that, should his father, this near-stranger above him, decide to squeeze just a bit more, he will be crushed entirely. Killed. Gone, just like his mother. 

“You,” his father says. He hardly needs to say anything else. Linton accepts that as reason, as answer, as _enough._

“ _You._ ”

Linton has to breathe. He barely can, choking back coughs that will only make it harder. He sucks in half a gulp, and then another. He winces, and shuts his eyes, and waits, because he does not dare plead. He doesn’t know if he even could.

“You,” his father says, a third and final time, before at last releasing his grasp and sitting back.

Linton pants for air. He wants to curl into himself, but his body does not obey. It stays frozen, and his eyes stay unable to look away.

His father regards him with hatred, with anger, and then...something different. Something far more lost. He reaches out again, hand hovering over Linton’s heaving chest, and it stills under him. His fingers splayed, he nearly touches down, but then he’s growling and slapping Linton again before stumbling towards the door. 

“If I see anything like this again,” his father says, turning to glare at him over his shoulder, “I shall give you a flogging. Unlike you’ve had before, eh? It isn’t something to ask for. So _don’t._ ”

“Yes, Father,” Linton whispers, before it can be threatened out of him. “ _Yes_. I’m sorry, Father.”

His father spits at him, landing somewhere upon the floor. He then rips the letter into pieces, sprinkles them about, and slams the door as he leaves.

Linton cries until his lungs hurt more than his face or his heart or both combined, and spends the next two days unable to leave his bed.

He thinks, at the beginning of a new month after one entirely spent here, that a letter to his uncle would not matter, because his uncle does not want him.

“Only your whore mother could love something as wretched and worthless as you,” his father tells him, sometime around then, as if reading the thoughts in his head.

And Linton believes him, without a second thought. 

**x**

He should have stayed in his room. 

There’s simply nothing that keeps him from being bored, not even his fear. He roams about the house in search of a book he hasn’t read, and finds himself entering a room he never has before. A room that, thus far, he thinks has been shut, and he’d been warned not to touch any closed doors. 

But the door is ajar now, just a bit. He pushes his way inside, curious, and finds another bedroom, one that looks unused, but not unclean. It’s been kept perfectly tidy, dusted, as if awaiting a guest, though it doesn’t look like somewhere his father would rest, and is not somewhere any of the servants or his cousin would, either.

On the wall, catching his attention, hangs a portrait of a woman he’s not seen before. He wipes a hair off the frame, and tilts his head to look at it a bit better. She seems familiar, in some way, though he’s not sure why.

There’s footsteps in the hall, and he turns, backing himself up against the wall as he sees his father in the doorway.

“What are you doing?” 

“I—I don’t know, Father,” he says. “Looking. I’m sorry.”

“Looking?” The man approaches him, and Linton braces himself, but instead of striking him his father simply takes the picture off the wall and steps back, as if Linton is the threat.

“You don’t look at her.” 

Linton is confused. He coughs into his sleeve, symptoms always worsened by nerves, and then apologizes again. 

And, so damn _foolishly,_ asks, “Who is she?”

His father looks, momentarily, human. His lips quirk, just a bit, as he gazes down at the frame.

“Mine,” he says. “My Catherine.”

Not Linton’s mother. Someone else. Before, or after? It doesn’t much matter. He’s not sure he wants to know. 

And yet...there’s something about the way his father seems, now. Amicable, perhaps, even in the slightest. 

Linton is so, so lonely. He’s not sure he minds how it ends, if for just a moment he can speak to someone.

“I’m sorry for coming in, Father,” he says, taking on the most innocence to his voice that he can manage. “Will you tell me of her?”

His father twitches, and looks up at him. Linton casts his eyes down, lowers his head, and stifles another cough. 

“She was mine,” his father says, after a long time. “And then your _vile_ uncle took her from me. You think he’s a kind man, but you’re wrong, boy. He stole her away.”

“My moth—” He stops himself just in time, perhaps a bit late. His father sets his jaw, and quickly Linton tries to fix his mistake. “I was never told about that. I believe you, Father.”

“Oh, you believe me! Well thank the Lord, eh?” The man sits down on the bed and sighs. “She is gone, now. In body, at least. She would not be, had your cousin not been born early.”

“My—Catherine?” 

“You bastard,” his father seethes. “Don’t you speak her name.”

“I-I’m sorry, Father. I—I only mean my cousin. That is her mother…?”

“I loved her.” His father’s voice is quiet, dreamy, and very sad. It almost makes Linton feel badly for him. 

Until something changes in his face. It becomes stony again, and he lifts the frame, squinting at it.

He then looks up, and says, “You touched her.”

Linton shakes his head. Nothing seems to be able to come out. 

“You lying _whore._ There’s a fingerprint, right here! Smudged right on her face from your dirty, rotten little fingers!” 

“No,” Linton whispers, “no, Father. I didn’t! I promise you, I didn’t!” 

But he _did,_ and his father seems to know it without doubt. The man sneers at him, and wipes at the frame with his sleeve for a moment before placing it upon the bed as if it were a person, gentle, propped up against the pillows. Linton, vaguely, wishes he had someone to treat him like that again, and aches to know he never will.

“You should not have done that,” his father says. He stands, and Linton whimpers, sliding back until he’s pushed himself into the corner of the room. His father flexes his fingers with enough force to crack them audibly, and takes off his coat, laying it on the bed. 

Linton thinks he’s going to _die._ He thinks the man is going to murder him, right here. He starts to cry, and that makes anger flash even brighter in the man’s eyes. His father takes a jerky step toward him, then another, and Linton’s so absolutely consumed with mind-numbing terror that he ends up wetting himself, and he’s not even of the sense to feel shame.

“You disgusting _cretin,_ ” his father hisses, grabbing him by the throat again, and this time Linton can’t breathe at all. He kicks his feet as he’s lifted completely off the ground, pinned against the wall, but his father doesn’t pause a moment.

“You will never touch her again. Do you hear me? No. _No._ I need to make sure you remember. I need to.”

Linton will already remember, and he tries desperately to say that, but he can’t speak. Instead of releasing him, his father drags him along as he leaves the room, and Linton’s chest is on fire by the time they reach another down the hall, which his father shuts them inside.

He locks the door, as if anyone would come anyways.

And then he beats Linton, more thoroughly than Linton ever even thought he had to fear. He stomps his foot on Linton’s stomach, his chest, chokes him until he’s unable to last a moment longer, grants him air, and then does it again. He calls Linton the most horrible things, everything he’s heard before and everything new. He grabs Linton’s hair and yanks on it, again and again, even as he shrieks for the man to stop.

“Please! Father! _Father!_ ”

They’re left unanswered, prayers left unheard. He’s sent into a coughing fit after another bout of strangling that’s so intense it leaves him spitting blood, and then finally, the blows stop. He moans and wails and curls into the tightest ball he can, weeping as red drips from his mouth onto the floor, as he retches from the pain and then, because that hurts even _worse,_ cries harder.

“Shut up,” his father orders. “You think I’ve treated you badly? You think you have any right to be _afraid_ of me? Worthless creature. I’ve been too kind. What have I received in return? Lies. Misbehavior. Whining. _Disobedience.”_

“I’m...sorry…” Linton’s voice is barely audible, barely more than a painful wheeze of breath. “Father…”

“Not yet,” his father says, and leaves the room, leaves Linton bloody and helpless on the cold wood and sends no one to help him. 

He stays there until he can move himself, and that isn’t for a very long time, through fits of feverish sleep he wakes shivering from and more tears than he thought he possessed the ability to cry out.

When he does find the strength to crawl out into the hall, wailing for help, his father’s servant isn’t gentle with him. The man grabs Linton by his arm and drags him to his feet, calls him a sniveling weakling who deserved nothing less, and then drops him onto his bed and leaves him. Linton is thirsty and filthy yet can do nothing for himself but strip his clothes away and sleep again.

Water isn’t brought until the next morning, and though a bath is drawn he’s too weak to do anything but sit in it, dazed, silent. Near every part of him is mottled with painful black and blue, and he can't bear to even look down to survey the damage. It's there, he knows, and that's already too much for him. He stays until the warmth is gone and he’s cold again, always so _cold,_ but he’s far too frightened of seeing his father again to dare go try and sit by the fire. It’s too out in the open. He needs to stay here, hidden, because whatever else his father may want to do to him because he stupidly thinks Linton isn’t afraid _enough_ , Linton doesn’t want to find out.

It’s chance, maybe (but likely how long he spent on the cold floor and the beating itself, he realizes after) that he ends up with the excuse of becoming sicker than ever, unable to leave his bed for near two weeks, between bouts of fever and chills. 

His father doesn’t visit him. He doesn’t see the man at all, and for that he’s relieved. He’s left to his own devices, with his meals and medicine brought a few times a day but, as much as he begs, they don’t stay.

They’re afraid of their master, too, likely. They look at Linton in a way that makes him know the man tells them horrible, awful things about him, and has convinced them that he is not worth their time.

He believes it, too. He hides his sickness when he can, because he knows it makes him the weak fool his father has told him he is. Perhaps it’s his fault for being so sickly in the first place; he can’t remember a time when he wasn’t, and so he must have been born so. And to be forced like that that upon his poor mother...he no longer thinks she was anything but burdened by him. He sobs into his pillow at night and wonders if she’s not better off where she is now, because to be with him is a curse unlike any other.

He stops doing much after that. He stays quiet, stays out of the way, stays asleep if he can help it. He doesn’t even read very often anymore, though sometimes he stares at pages he’s already memorized and goes somewhere distant, in his head, and thinks about how it used to be. 

**x**

He’s very, very sick the next time his father comes to him. He thinks, much later, that that’s why his father chose to do it then. 

He’s hardly able to stay awake, listless, when the door opens, and though his heart starts to pound and his body aches to run, to hide, he just doesn’t have the strength. Instead he weakly squirms, protests with a long moan, and then coughs himself into silence again.

His father is holding something. Some folded paper he doesn’t recognize the significance of. The man grabs for the tray his uneaten breakfast is on and uses it to flatten the papers out on, setting it, with a pen and an ink vial, beside his trembling hand.

“What…?” he hardly manages, and his father sits beside him on the bed. He remembers the way his mother used to do the same, to pet his hair and coddle him when he was this ill, and tears burn his throat as he frantically swallows them back.

“Your will,” his father says. “You will change it, now. Upon your death, and God willing the world will be graced with it soon enough, you will leave everything to me.”

“But—” Linton begins, so _foolishly,_ and his father reaches out to settle his hand upon Linton’s throat again. The very touch leaves him unable to hold the tears at bay anymore, and he weeps openly, staring up at him. 

“Please, Father, please...it hurts so much to breathe... _please don’t._ ”

“Do as I say, then,” his father says. “Now.”

Linton does. He writes everything he’s ordered to, because he knows what will happen if he doesn’t. He gets tears upon the page, and he’s struck hard for it, to stun him into stopping, and the headache it brings on doesn’t leave for the rest of the day and most of the next. 

The man leaves Linton alone for a while, then. Linton even dares to come downstairs to sit by the fire, when he’s finally found the energy, because he just can’t bear the cold any longer and a beating wouldn’t be any worse than it, and he’s not punished for doing so. It’s warmer than he’s been in so many weeks, and he sleeps better than he has in a long while there, sprawled upon the couch the servants had dragged closer in a rare act of bettering his life instead of ignoring it exists at all. 

He wakes no longer alone. Sitting at his feet is the monstrous man himself, and Linton gasps, pulling his legs up into his chest, shielding his head with his arms. 

“I’m sorry, Father,” he whispers, though he’s not sure what he’s done.

His father doesn’t respond, staring into the fire as if in a trance. Linton can smell the alcohol from where he is, now.

He doesn’t relax, but after a long while of silence, Linton maybe feels like the man will pretend he isn’t there. He’s warming himself by the fire, is all. Drunk enough to be a fool and take the couch instead of another chair, but it has nothing to do with Linton.

And then his father fixes him with a sharp gaze, and Linton flinches, ducking his head and cursing himself for staring.

“You look like her,” his father says finally. “I should have you flogged for that alone. To torture me with her face even after her death...that should be punished.”

Linton covers his face entirely, and wishes to disappear. 

It’s silent, save for the crackling of the fire. 

And then the man wraps one hand around his ankle, and yanks him closer. Linton yelps, and then slaps both hands over his mouth because he should know better than to do so in his father’s presence. He coughs into his palms, and watches his father anxiously. 

“Isabella,” his father says, and Linton sucks in another harsh breath, for it’s the first time he’s heard the name spoken here, and he never thought it would be from his father.

“Wretched woman.” And then he reaches out, hand outstretched towards Linton’s neck, and Linton squeezes his eyes shut.

It touches, but not the same. Something is different about the way his fingers move over Linton’s skin; gentle, almost, and yet not. It’s a way that leaves him feeling far sicker than any physical illness could. 

He doesn’t open his eyes, because he fears what he’s going to see in the man’s face if he should.

“I did not want you,” his father whispers. “I did not ask for you. I wanted, if I should have had a son, someone to be proud of. Someone strong. Someone worthy. You are _none_ of those things.”

“I know,” Linton finds himself replying, if only to get himself left alone again. 

“You know _what,_ wretch?”

“I am nothing, Father,” he murmurs.

“You are sick. Weak. _Pitiful._ And I have no pity.”

“I’m sorry,” Linton says, and he is. He is. He wishes he could have been something else, someone worthy of having life at all, someone whose father could have loved him, perhaps like his uncle loved his cousin.

His uncle likely wouldn’t have loved him any more, he knows now. He wanted so desperately for the man to come save him, but he doesn’t deserve to be saved. No one deserves to have to be burdened with him. “I’m so sorry, Father.”

He’s struck for his troubles, but he wants it this time. He speaks again, apologizes again just to welcome the second slap. He would welcome _more_ should his father choose to give it. 

Instead those fingers rub against his jaw, a thumb swiping over his lips, and there is something so deeply strange and unnerving about the motions, about whatever lies underneath them, that it leaves him shaking, squirming, pulling away and cowering again.

“You bastard,” his father spits, and then shoves him off onto the floor. Linton can’t quite break his fall in time, striking his head against the ground, and it leaves him curling into himself, sobbing his pain and anguish and fear.

He never hears his father leave, and he doesn’t have the will to lift himself back up even after he’s alone. He sleeps there, on the floor, and knows that it's truly nothing less than he deserves.

**x**

At the mark of six months since he came here, Linton tries to die. 

He is weaker yet, sicker often, but it isn’t something that takes effort to slide himself down enough in the bath that the water comes over his face, silencing everything around him, reducing his world to only the sound of his heartbeat. 

He wills it to stop. He prays that he’s sent to his mother, and then prays not to be, so as to not curse her in death as well.

_Beat, beat, beat._

_Stop, stop, stop._

He scrabbles at the tub, torn between desperation to die and instinctual need to breathe, between holding himself down and yanking himself back up. His heart pounds in his ears, and it hurts more than he can bear, but he can’t imagine living like this any longer—

Hands grab at him, pull him back up into air. 

Linton did not expect to be saved by his father.

“You _stupid bastard,_ ” the man screams as he chokes and gasps, “do you know what you could have done? Do you? You nearly ruined everything!”

He doesn’t have the ability to ask what that means. He faints, wakes back in his bed, and briefly wonders if his father has cared about him all this time after all. Why else would he stop him? Was there any other explanation? 

His father is quick to answer that, as Linton falls into a coughing fit that could be heard throughout the house, making it clear he’s awake when perhaps he should have stayed asleep. 

“Your cousin,” his father tells him, looming over him once again. “You will marry her.”

“My—Catherine?”

The hand returns to his throat, a much more familiar, furious way. 

“I did not mean to—”

“Keep your mouth shut, wretch,” his father demands, and he does. “You will marry her, because I am telling you to. And if you dare utter a word of rebuttal I will flay the skin from your back, and then you will do it anyway. You have no choice, boy. I have waited my entire life, and you have very little left of yours. She will become your wife, and as her father I will gain her inheritance of the Grange.”

He realizes, quite immediately, that this is why his father saved him. Not because he loved or cared for him, but because he wanted to use him. 

And he doesn’t know why that hurts. It shouldn’t hurt at all. This is what he deserves.

Through tears, between sobs, he says, “Yes, Father.”

“Don’t you try that again. If _only_ I could allow you to rid yourself, I would. I would have _watched,_ you piteous little devil.”

“ _Father_ ,” he weeps, and then the man snarls at him like an animal, and Linton goes silent. 

He does not leave his bed for weeks, after. And the first time he does, to go by the fire again, during the day and _never_ at night again, he’s startled by the sight of his father leading his cousin inside. She greets him with kisses and a hug, with no acknowledgement of the way his father is regarding them both as a predator.

He knows what his father’s plans are. He knows what he’s supposed to do.

And though he ultimately fails to do so, he _does try_ to send Catherine away.

It does not matter, though. They are forced to marry, anyways. Linton thinks he loves her, and Catherine loves him, but that doesn’t matter either. He’s not ever sure it did, because his father will always win. 

**x**

He helps Catherine leave, one night, against his father’s wishes, to go to their dying uncle, and he pays for it dearly. He was not stupid enough to expect otherwise.

His father calls him down from his bed, orders him to sit in a chair across from him, and then has them left alone, just the two of them.

He expects a beating, or worse, and crushes his eyes shut, preparing himself.

Only it does not come. Instead, he finds his father staring at him. Only staring. Nothing but _looking._ He watches Linton in terrifying, silent hatred while Linton starts to squirm and moans his fear and, quite quickly, to sob. He begs for his punishment, for the man to get it over with, but the man doesn’t speak. He smirks a bit, wickedly, and Linton cries harder still.

He doesn’t know how long he spends with the monster's evil eyes on him, but he does not leave the room the same. The fear of what horrors are to come, of _when_ they will come, is far more than he can handle in his weakened state. The most awful of things cross his mind, playing over and over as his father only watches, basks in his pain. He cries until he coughs and chokes and vomits and then cries again, until he’s nothing more than a shivering, trembling mess that can’t get a word out. 

And it still doesn’t end. It seems like it will _never end._ Every so often his father will move, will jerk forward or shift his feet, and it reawakens every bit of fear that had, out of pure exhaustion, started to briefly fade from Linton’s body. His heart pounds and pounds against his ribcage until it aches, until everything in his body aches, until he can’t physically cry anymore and he’s simply racked with dry sobs that squeeze his insides and make his lungs feel like they may give out on him at any moment.

He doesn’t know when he dropped out of the chair to curl into himself on the floor, but that’s where he is when his father finally stands. By now, Linton is too tired, too drained, to do anything at all about it. He lays there, and he feels relief, because _finally_ , a punishment, something palpable and endurable and _ending._

Only that is not what happens. His father could kick him, could beat him, could drag him out to the stables and make good on his promises to flog him. Linton wants him to, wishes he would.

Instead, the man settles down into the chair above Linton, and looks down at him again. Linton’s crying, somehow, picks up again, and he realizes now that that’s exactly what his father wants to happen, but he hasn’t a hope to stop it. 

After an eternity, after Linton’s so completely emotionally beaten down and fatigued that he’s fading in and out of consciousness, his father speaks. After so much silence, it only renews the fear again, but this time Linton can’t make a sound.

“You won’t disobey me again,” the man says, and it isn’t a question. Linton couldn’t answer if it was. “You won’t dare to. What things did you think of me doing, wretch? Were they terrible? I’ve never seen you so colorless. Whatever they were, boy, I assure you I can and will do worse than anything you could have imagined should you ever cross me again."

He doesn’t say more, and he doesn’t demand Linton give him his agreement. He doesn’t have to do either. He has his servant carry Linton’s quiet, shaking form back up to bed, and Linton never recovers enough to leave it again.

Something broke inside of him that night, though he isn't sure what. He never has another moment where he doesn't fear for his life. He screams himself awake from nightmares of punishments, from memories of _staring,_ sweat-soaked and frightened and pleading to the Heavens to bring him, for just a moment, someone to comfort him. Catherine is the only one who has done so since his mother died, and he begs for her, cries out for her.

He stops being able to tell much of how long has gone by. Catherine does return to him, eventually, but he’s so weak by then that he can’t stay awake for very long, speaking to her only in short sentences that take all of his energy away. 

He knows his uncle is dead, now. 

He knows he will be dead, soon, too. 

Catherine takes care of him, up until then. His father doesn’t hurt him, doesn’t even look into his bedroom. It’s only her, and he's grateful.

“Will I see her again?” he asks her, eventually. “My mother?”

“ _Yes,_ ” Catherine tells him, wiping his face and neck with a cool cloth as she does so often. “But I will miss you, Linton.”

She kisses him gently, and says, “I love you.”

He’s nearly too weak to smile, but he feels his mouth tilt just a bit. Catherine kisses him there, too, at the corner.

“We will see each other again, somewhere not so cruel,” she says, grasping onto his hand.

And he holds onto that, onto her, until it’s the only thing tethering him to this life. 

Then, he feels his mother, petting through his hair. He smells her, and has never felt more comforted.

“Come,” she says, whispering into his ear. “I have much to show you.” 

He’s missed her so much. Her voice brings him a joy unlike he’s felt since she died, and unlike he ever wants to lose again. He no longer feels so sick, so afraid, and when he opens his eyes for the first time in days, she’s there with him, smiling amongst flowers and light and the most all-consuming feeling of love.

He isn’t scared. Not with her. And he feels a certainty that Catherine’s promise will prove true.

And with her hand replacing Catherine’s in his own, he walks with his mother into the brightness beyond.


End file.
